During the opening 'movie', I begin to see some really strange flashes and artifacts all over the screen, appearing in wierd places and getting worse as time goes on.

After this, it take me to the menu screen where the entire screen is black except for this area outlined in green.  I was able to reproduce this once.  During the second time, while trying to capture pictures as the artifacts appeared, I ALT-ESC'd out of the program to paste them into Photoshop.  Coming back, the game no longer displayed any artifacts.  In fact, it hasn't since.

DXDiag

I guess I'll update the nVidia drivers, restart the computer and attempt to recreate.